This is exactly how my videos look before I edit the living shit out of them. Can you tell me what you think about my Kat Stacks video? This isn't spam!! I really liked the lists on the upper left corner..I bet that made this a bitch to edit.
Very interesting video, thank you for doing this.. my ums and ers annoy me, but it's good to know about the reason and the wider context of such things.
Another great "focused" video, I like the topic as well. You might find this interesting, I actually knew a guy at my former high school who was extremely and abnormally talented musically. I rarely (some classes literally never) heard him say "uh" or make hesitations in his speech, but yet he was very creative and funny. He wasn't "slow" either in his speech. It was strange because his brother was like that as well. I would even ignore what he was saying sometimes just to count the uhs.
Wow. When you said that right there, it just hit me. Here's this guy, communicating the fact that he can communicate and that it's... amazing. Yeah. It is.
Also, I did look up spoonerisms on wikipedia and the section there on kniferisms and forkerisms would seem to contradict what you said with which language parts might be switched during speech.
yes. Reminds me of the good old days of youtube, before we all got to ultra-sophisticated. Here's the takeaway message I got: we are the animals which go "um".
This was wonderful, and cleared up just about any questions I had regarding our discussion last week.
Just out of curiostiy, were you aware that Mandarin wholly accepts thought and filler phonates (Note: FF tells me that's spelled wrong- Probably becayse it's not an Active word in our language!) as acceptable parts of dialogue? English does not, and Discourages them- You won't see "um" in a standard dictionary.
The whiteman is keeping out mongoloid brothers down!
I did some asking around because what you said was interesting to me. Apparently "neige", while a word, is still discouraged, but I didn't get to hear about other fillers. I would be most impressed by a language that included fillers in writing, though I know they're unnecessary there. Still, the idea of a culture embracing slips and stumbles is enticing.
I find it particularly interesting that the language from a culture what prides itself on its use of niceties in social behavior, accepts the oh's and hm's and guh's of the seemingly 'improper' processing period.
Are you familiar with the construction of Hanzi? I've got some pretty interesting information regarding this topic and the logogrammatic radicals in Mandarin onomatopoeia.
I don't want to bombard you with it, if you'd rather not be.
Today I watched a flawless, beautifully extempore flowing and horrific speech by Mitt Romney about how certain middle eastern people are "unalloyed evil" and can only be met with overwhelming force.
Then I watched your video where you stumbled a bit, and I remembered that Wittgenstein was considered a poor lecturer.
Derrida had a theory that when people speak, they go on auto-pilot and "fall asleep". The more aware and honest people stumble, whereas the sleeping automatons flow. Interesting.
While I do agree with you almost 100% I still have to add that no matter how complex our language is, it is somewhat difficult to properly express our emotions with it. We would need to have hundreds of synonyms or verbal connotations to every word say what we really mean.
"Proper" expression of emotions is, I think, a legend that we dream of, thinking of idealized poets and lovers past. This "proper" expression is not something language does well, because it's not something with utility. (In how emotional expression normally works, there is utility--"I am sad," etc., but you're after something deeper.) I've got two books out on this, the first attempting to remedy deep emotional expression, and the second rejecting it.
Some Language's do it better than others (Japanese would be a good example I think) But yeah, I do think its pretty much impossible to do with spoken language, and even more so when written.
Emotional context just doesn't translate all that well into verbal noise.
I think you should have added an "awkward laughter" counter too. There would only have been 1 or 2, but it would have been funny.
You averaged one "um" every 7.2 seconds.
You averaged one pause, of any sort, every 3.5 seconds. Of course, this will be distorted slightly depending on how long the average pause itself was (I don't have the motivation to get that in depth) but I'd say it's fairly safe to claim one pause every 5 to 6 seconds.
I presume there have been controlled experiments to determine the degree of freedom people have when choosing words.
We may very well have a choice of ten words to make for each word but I doubt we enumerate through each possibility to find the best one (although I know we enumerate when trying to predict words).
The probability of a given word is likely to depend on previous exposure to it or preference by an individual perhaps more so than the desire to be tactful or precise.Thats just a guess
Oh, I think precision and tact are the furthest thing from people's minds (in general) when they speak, choosing their words. In fact, I agree that exposure and preference are two major motives behind semantic selection. These are the avenues people take to the "right" word for the job, because they are the job itself. Exposure I'd elaborate to mention contextual exposure, like when the person uses a specific word, and you use it as well to oblige them.
I need to take back something. I think tact is on a lot of people's minds quite often, though not as much as exposure or preference. Especially in English with the PC project in the workplace. Also, if you're try to/not to offend or anger someone in general, like when speaking about religion or politics, tact is a conscious concern.
Jeff, this was unbelievably fucking fascinating to watch. I actually feel more self-aware for having seen it. I can see why this subject is so compelling to you.
Ironically, it leaves me with more questions than I had before, which might be a good reason to pick up "Um" or one of the other books you mentioned. I still wish you had spent a bit more time unpacking the word "manipulative" in this context, but in any case thank you for the time you spent on this video.
Yes, it seems a number of people so far have been interested in that aspect, and I should have said more about it. Let me prepare something. For now, I'll say that the vast majority of those 25K words are synonyms for each other, and a very small minority are the only word we know for something. "Um" is a good book, but if you want something approachable about semantic choice, go with "The Stuff of Thought."
Your error counting was incredible, probably not only hard from the technical stand point, but from the personal stand point (fuck, I shudder too much!)
ooooh i've got that book! Started reading it a while ago. Found it hard to absorb it then. Maybe I'll try again, as I've read and understood more philosophers since then.
Awesome video by the way :) not a lot of youtubers have the balls to do this
If words are like functions which map symbols to semantics, then it really doesn't matter how vast your vocabulary is. More complex semantics are represented through function composition of existing words. Having more words available logically only means that you have the ability to be more concise - which is difficult without sacrificing some nuance in semantics.
This is one of the major current issues in artificial intelligence and linguistics.
I don't agree that words are like functions that map symbols to meaning. Evidence doesn't point toward this. It's in fact this difference, and that we must do with computers using functions to map symbols to meaning to do what we actually do when WE speak, that has caused so many problems for AI research and development. Do you know of randyhelzerman? You and he could have a great discussion on the AI analogy in specific. My understanding of AI doesn't go much beyond what I've said here.
Actually where you talk about our minds constructing linear expressions from parallel thought processes is also interesting, and another very huge problem to tackle as we've pretty much reached the limits of single-threaded performance.
Turns out I'm sub'd to him and didn't notice. Very interesting channel. I'll have to check it out. I've just been diving into some of the formal linguistics & completeness/complexity stuff which I find quite interesting so far. :)
I work in a factory. With people from many language traditions. And I think you are highly overrating the amount of thought that goes into most common speech. I get your point. But I still contend that most common speech isn't that complex. It may be on a higher order than Basic English, but not by much. Maybe it's that many of them are the product of the American education system.
You're right, it's not far above basic english. But I would say that it's not that we use only so many words, but that we only need to accomplish so many things with our day to day language. Depending on who we're talking to and what we want from them, the specific words we use to accomplish our goals are much, much more diverse.
True. But there are also non-verbal levels of communication going on. Facial expressions, body language, non-verbal sounds and even to a limited extent scents. I've dealt with people that had more limited vocabularies than Koko the Gorilla and I was able to sort of communicate. Though we didn't discuss philosophy. :)
I think that's one reason I like your vids so much, you explain things. I love just sitting here and absorbing information, having someone expose their thought pattern in order to communicate some idea. Listening to someone talk about something they know a lot about is so stimulating. They express through words their understanding, how their minds process it. I know I've said the same thing over again but there's something so very appealing about listening to an idea being broken down
I'd be interested in hearing where you disagree with Pinker. This, by the way, was the most fun I've ever had watching your videos. It was like you were actually conversing with me in a candid and interesting way,
You should do more videos on linguistics and language.
somehow more authentically expressive than all the polish and shine editing might otherwise have brought. This was freakin brilliant....a look behind the pretense...a lesson of editing awareness...well done
just want to throw this in, I will use Um sometimes when I write in comments. So it shows that I am thinking, that the idea I am presenting is not completely formed. Kind of a warning to the readers that I am also unsure. people tend to react better towards those comments, filling in the information i may be leaving out , without taking my head off for it.
The upper classes of my own fellow englishmen have a rather strange tendency to replace most of the um's with stutters (Hugh Grant). Im not sure whether this means anything but I'm just throwin it out there, make of it what you will.
I'm only 5 minutes in at this stage but I must say I'm loving this. Reason being that I'm so used to seeing your slick, easy flowing edited work and I know I can sometimes seem very plodding and deliberate in my delivery. But I rarely edit my videos and I usually do them off the top of my head so it made me realise I'm not actually doing as badly as I thought I was. Anyway. On to watch the rest.
Very interesting. I would agree about making the semantic choices, even if I would have a minor quibble about what you said about only ever needing 2500 words (or whatever the number was). It's not that I completely disagree, but I would imagine that the 2500 words you would need would depend to some extent on the ... er... can't think of a right word here ... "domain" perhaps? For example, I would use a different set of 2500 words at work than I would use at home.
Don't fall for it Pino! He's just doing it in order to make a point. He's so fucking brilliant that he feels the need to perpetrate this fraudulent farce so that he can be perceived as a non-Mensa freakazoid.
I have a suspicion regarding your use of "um" etc. in this video. I think when you're partially conscious of the "ums" you're actually more likely to use them.
I've noticed this before also with alliteration. Trying to think of only words with few or no "s" sounds, I discovered I sounded like a snake.
Another thing: I believe your level of alertness also affects your use of filler words. But this is probably covered in "Um..." which I have only got to chapter 1 in.
I was at first, and they didn't come consciously, but the ones I noticed I laughed at. But getting into the groove of my topic, no, I can't agree that there was really any subconscious effort to make more.
"please don't interrupt me" but still those are the exact moments when we do interrupt. And it drives me nuts. Yet I'm incapable to rise above it and stop interrupting that prosess. If I start doing that Video responce i promiced you've just made it just wee bit harder. Nice work
I agree. We exist to do this. That's why it saddens me, to hear such unimagination, ignorant conversations. Everywhere I go. Has the art of intelligent interaction died?
The mere fact that you are posting an intelligent question, interacting in a mindful way, posits that it is not! Whether it is not a central tenet of out life I will agree it is not. But when was it anyway?
There's are words that you don't use very often, That can take a long ass time to remember...
The last time I used "Celestial" it took me 5 minutes to recall the damn word... LOL, The concept of celestial was there I just couldn't put a sound to it.
Hell I sometimes take a long time to think of words that I do use often, usually when I'm tired, or distracted by excess 'background' noise. The difference is that I do not use 'ahhh' or 'ummmm', or any fillers at all. I simply allow myself to be silent during the time I'm recalling a word. Some persons (usually the audio addicted) accuse me of not completing sentences, because of this.
I don't consider fillers to be helpful to communication, so much as a way of stalling, while we chose our words. They also reveal a certain amount of discomfort with the process.
The English language is far inferior to many other languages in communicative ability. We should make every effort to communicate on the top of the ability of language because of that. :)
Information retention studies say otherwise. It's not about discomfort, it doesn't reveal something the speaker is trying to hide. Though mistakes occur more when the speaker is stressed or distracted, but they happen even when the speaker is perfectly comfortable and concentrated. And I don't know where you get this idea that English is "far inferior," because it's not. And even if we spoke a different language, the fillers and mistakes occur just as often, it's a universal part of language.
English certainly is inferior in many ways. Other languages have more shades of meaning, and can be more precise, while simultaneously being more concise. Of course this is not a comprehensive effect. For the cultures that use English as a primary language, it is superior, as its areas of excellence center around the activities and concepts that are important for those cultures.
Those shades of meaning only apply to clusters of words here and there, in English and in all other languages. Using "inferior" to describe any of them is just about biased enough to be silly. Less complicated, I'd agree. At any rate, its simplicity should alleviate mistakes. It doesn't, of course, and thankfully, because they're only mistakes to prescriptivists--who are generally too concerned with how things ought to be to notice how things need to be--and to the rest of us, necessary.
A language does not exist, live, breath outside its users. Yes, there are dictionaries to count words and of course there are statistics on the number of people that use (to various extends) a specific language. But it is misleading to try to 'rate' languages. Even though I'm a native Greek speaker I don't communicate any better or worse because of that.
I guess you can believe that, but the only difference between this video and language in normal conversation is that I lacked a person for feedback, which may affect the numbers, I don't know. I'm pretty sure these numbers are about average.
To make that remark, is absolutely absurd. If you've ever made a video, or attempted to teach/explain something, you are well aware that when you are put on the spot, words don't just appear. Like Jeff said, the ums/uhs are there to insinuate the process of thought.
Actually, to make the remark you've just made only further emphasizes my point made in his prior video about people without the capacity to understand points. Jeff makes an entire video explaining the semantic uses of the words uh and um and then goes on to not only have over 200 of them, but to count them himself for our pleasure.
Well.. If Az is right, which I think he is, then you are being just as guilty as he is in terms of the semantics chosen in your response, given that you, as himself, both have an 'agenda' and interests to follow.
Boy aren't we a bunch of pupeteers trying to ''outpuppetize'' each other?
Spectacular video, this put me on a path I can navigate for some research I’ve been doing , but can I only say one thing!
Say “UM” again moth!@#$% I dare you I double dare you moth$#@%!
Say “UM” one more got damn time!
AbsolutelySubjective 1 year ago
This is exactly how my videos look before I edit the living shit out of them. Can you tell me what you think about my Kat Stacks video? This isn't spam!! I really liked the lists on the upper left corner..I bet that made this a bitch to edit.
textingname 1 year ago
Very interesting video, thank you for doing this.. my ums and ers annoy me, but it's good to know about the reason and the wider context of such things.
bewarethelizards42 1 year ago
Another great "focused" video, I like the topic as well. You might find this interesting, I actually knew a guy at my former high school who was extremely and abnormally talented musically. I rarely (some classes literally never) heard him say "uh" or make hesitations in his speech, but yet he was very creative and funny. He wasn't "slow" either in his speech. It was strange because his brother was like that as well. I would even ignore what he was saying sometimes just to count the uhs.
BlueBarrier782 2 years ago
ur so fked up man
kkk7hh 2 years ago
language is liek so gh3y lolz.
PerennialLucidity 2 years ago
love your videos always -
how dare you?
LaileB22 2 years ago
"This is fucking amazing."
Wow. When you said that right there, it just hit me. Here's this guy, communicating the fact that he can communicate and that it's... amazing. Yeah. It is.
Also, I did look up spoonerisms on wikipedia and the section there on kniferisms and forkerisms would seem to contradict what you said with which language parts might be switched during speech.
ThcPatient 2 years ago 3
I won't ever lough abput "ums"
Erik4xp 2 years ago
lol you look about as baked making this as i am watching it!
lol
;d
666norton420 2 years ago 2
yes. Reminds me of the good old days of youtube, before we all got to ultra-sophisticated. Here's the takeaway message I got: we are the animals which go "um".
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
Thanx Azrienoch for a candid take on language and semantic selection. I believe you successfully managed to get your message across.
manny27021976 2 years ago
my dad never says uh or um and i guess that's why it's so awkward when he's struggling to find a word.
tomfrankly 2 years ago
Thank you, Sir.
This was wonderful, and cleared up just about any questions I had regarding our discussion last week.
Just out of curiostiy, were you aware that Mandarin wholly accepts thought and filler phonates (Note: FF tells me that's spelled wrong- Probably becayse it's not an Active word in our language!) as acceptable parts of dialogue? English does not, and Discourages them- You won't see "um" in a standard dictionary.
The whiteman is keeping out mongoloid brothers down!
Tinplz 2 years ago
I did some asking around because what you said was interesting to me. Apparently "neige", while a word, is still discouraged, but I didn't get to hear about other fillers. I would be most impressed by a language that included fillers in writing, though I know they're unnecessary there. Still, the idea of a culture embracing slips and stumbles is enticing.
azrienoch 2 years ago
As do I.
I find it particularly interesting that the language from a culture what prides itself on its use of niceties in social behavior, accepts the oh's and hm's and guh's of the seemingly 'improper' processing period.
Are you familiar with the construction of Hanzi? I've got some pretty interesting information regarding this topic and the logogrammatic radicals in Mandarin onomatopoeia.
I don't want to bombard you with it, if you'd rather not be.
Tinplz 2 years ago
Today I watched a flawless, beautifully extempore flowing and horrific speech by Mitt Romney about how certain middle eastern people are "unalloyed evil" and can only be met with overwhelming force.
Then I watched your video where you stumbled a bit, and I remembered that Wittgenstein was considered a poor lecturer.
Derrida had a theory that when people speak, they go on auto-pilot and "fall asleep". The more aware and honest people stumble, whereas the sleeping automatons flow. Interesting.
Trollschool 2 years ago 2
While I do agree with you almost 100% I still have to add that no matter how complex our language is, it is somewhat difficult to properly express our emotions with it. We would need to have hundreds of synonyms or verbal connotations to every word say what we really mean.
Still an epic video 5* and faved
EricTheNihilist 2 years ago
"Proper" expression of emotions is, I think, a legend that we dream of, thinking of idealized poets and lovers past. This "proper" expression is not something language does well, because it's not something with utility. (In how emotional expression normally works, there is utility--"I am sad," etc., but you're after something deeper.) I've got two books out on this, the first attempting to remedy deep emotional expression, and the second rejecting it.
azrienoch 2 years ago
Some Language's do it better than others (Japanese would be a good example I think) But yeah, I do think its pretty much impossible to do with spoken language, and even more so when written.
Emotional context just doesn't translate all that well into verbal noise.
EricTheNihilist 2 years ago
I think you should have added an "awkward laughter" counter too. There would only have been 1 or 2, but it would have been funny.
You averaged one "um" every 7.2 seconds.
You averaged one pause, of any sort, every 3.5 seconds. Of course, this will be distorted slightly depending on how long the average pause itself was (I don't have the motivation to get that in depth) but I'd say it's fairly safe to claim one pause every 5 to 6 seconds.
I guess you made your point in more than one way.
ifwere1021 2 years ago 2
Loved this
DejectedDegenerate 2 years ago 2
I love when you do videos like this. I've got to check out that "Um" book it seems like it's up my alley.
ManOfEthnicity 2 years ago
A fantastic distraction from exam preparation!
Blindastronomer 2 years ago 3
educational stuff :)
justseanmusic 2 years ago
I presume there have been controlled experiments to determine the degree of freedom people have when choosing words.
We may very well have a choice of ten words to make for each word but I doubt we enumerate through each possibility to find the best one (although I know we enumerate when trying to predict words).
The probability of a given word is likely to depend on previous exposure to it or preference by an individual perhaps more so than the desire to be tactful or precise.Thats just a guess
GirlyVoice 2 years ago
Oh, I think precision and tact are the furthest thing from people's minds (in general) when they speak, choosing their words. In fact, I agree that exposure and preference are two major motives behind semantic selection. These are the avenues people take to the "right" word for the job, because they are the job itself. Exposure I'd elaborate to mention contextual exposure, like when the person uses a specific word, and you use it as well to oblige them.
azrienoch 2 years ago
I need to take back something. I think tact is on a lot of people's minds quite often, though not as much as exposure or preference. Especially in English with the PC project in the workplace. Also, if you're try to/not to offend or anger someone in general, like when speaking about religion or politics, tact is a conscious concern.
azrienoch 2 years ago
Jeff, this was unbelievably fucking fascinating to watch. I actually feel more self-aware for having seen it. I can see why this subject is so compelling to you.
Ironically, it leaves me with more questions than I had before, which might be a good reason to pick up "Um" or one of the other books you mentioned. I still wish you had spent a bit more time unpacking the word "manipulative" in this context, but in any case thank you for the time you spent on this video.
Feels like a gift.
TheoreticalBullshit 2 years ago 4
Yes, it seems a number of people so far have been interested in that aspect, and I should have said more about it. Let me prepare something. For now, I'll say that the vast majority of those 25K words are synonyms for each other, and a very small minority are the only word we know for something. "Um" is a good book, but if you want something approachable about semantic choice, go with "The Stuff of Thought."
azrienoch 2 years ago
do you read steven pinker?
JamesCalico 2 years ago
It's more like I keep tabs on him.
azrienoch 2 years ago
My personal spoonerism while running around on a beach at night.
"Running while fun is drunk!"
LanceDirk 2 years ago
what do you do for a living might i inquire?
konohamaru99 2 years ago
This would be laborious, but it would be interesting to count the vocabulary used in a video. Interesting video.
ExistentialExistent 2 years ago
Your error counting was incredible, probably not only hard from the technical stand point, but from the personal stand point (fuck, I shudder too much!)
InfectedDaemon 2 years ago
ooooh i've got that book! Started reading it a while ago. Found it hard to absorb it then. Maybe I'll try again, as I've read and understood more philosophers since then.
Awesome video by the way :) not a lot of youtubers have the balls to do this
Daria076 2 years ago
So the illiterate folks are RISC processors?
If words are like functions which map symbols to semantics, then it really doesn't matter how vast your vocabulary is. More complex semantics are represented through function composition of existing words. Having more words available logically only means that you have the ability to be more concise - which is difficult without sacrificing some nuance in semantics.
This is one of the major current issues in artificial intelligence and linguistics.
Ormaaj 2 years ago
I don't agree that words are like functions that map symbols to meaning. Evidence doesn't point toward this. It's in fact this difference, and that we must do with computers using functions to map symbols to meaning to do what we actually do when WE speak, that has caused so many problems for AI research and development. Do you know of randyhelzerman? You and he could have a great discussion on the AI analogy in specific. My understanding of AI doesn't go much beyond what I've said here.
azrienoch 2 years ago
Actually where you talk about our minds constructing linear expressions from parallel thought processes is also interesting, and another very huge problem to tackle as we've pretty much reached the limits of single-threaded performance.
Turns out I'm sub'd to him and didn't notice. Very interesting channel. I'll have to check it out. I've just been diving into some of the formal linguistics & completeness/complexity stuff which I find quite interesting so far. :)
Ormaaj 2 years ago
could the same be said for filler terms like "you know" or "like"?
largemarge1050 2 years ago
PUNK IN DRUBLIC
liquidfreak 2 years ago
I work in a factory. With people from many language traditions. And I think you are highly overrating the amount of thought that goes into most common speech. I get your point. But I still contend that most common speech isn't that complex. It may be on a higher order than Basic English, but not by much. Maybe it's that many of them are the product of the American education system.
tetsubo57 2 years ago
You're right, it's not far above basic english. But I would say that it's not that we use only so many words, but that we only need to accomplish so many things with our day to day language. Depending on who we're talking to and what we want from them, the specific words we use to accomplish our goals are much, much more diverse.
azrienoch 2 years ago
True. But there are also non-verbal levels of communication going on. Facial expressions, body language, non-verbal sounds and even to a limited extent scents. I've dealt with people that had more limited vocabularies than Koko the Gorilla and I was able to sort of communicate. Though we didn't discuss philosophy. :)
tetsubo57 2 years ago
I think that's one reason I like your vids so much, you explain things. I love just sitting here and absorbing information, having someone expose their thought pattern in order to communicate some idea. Listening to someone talk about something they know a lot about is so stimulating. They express through words their understanding, how their minds process it. I know I've said the same thing over again but there's something so very appealing about listening to an idea being broken down
sxeeplta 2 years ago
i <3 albert
youngn420 2 years ago
I love watching your videos, they're so inspiring. Plain and simple; they always make my day.
- ss
jadedss 2 years ago
I'd be interested in hearing where you disagree with Pinker. This, by the way, was the most fun I've ever had watching your videos. It was like you were actually conversing with me in a candid and interesting way,
You should do more videos on linguistics and language.
Hamandchees3 2 years ago
Fundamentally, I disagree that language is a representative system. Most other disagreements follow from a difference in this assumption.
azrienoch 2 years ago
While you believe that...?
manny27021976 2 years ago
spoonerisms lmao
kzwj 2 years ago
boyyyyyyyy you high lol
civvys 2 years ago
somehow more authentically expressive than all the polish and shine editing might otherwise have brought. This was freakin brilliant....a look behind the pretense...a lesson of editing awareness...well done
chasermartinsyde 2 years ago
love it! great idea using an unedited video just to give an example of how average speech operates.
f1nalfantasy 2 years ago
I like this type of video. The ums make it work.
just want to throw this in, I will use Um sometimes when I write in comments. So it shows that I am thinking, that the idea I am presenting is not completely formed. Kind of a warning to the readers that I am also unsure. people tend to react better towards those comments, filling in the information i may be leaving out , without taking my head off for it.
anonforuz 2 years ago
Dork. I'm way worse than you. My vids are a chop shop indeed. I waste 6 minutes of vid for every 3 I use! I suck. :-)
ReverendAtomSmasher 2 years ago
i try to avoid ums aND UNHS, maybe thats why the flow of my conversations suck
unicep12345 2 years ago
The upper classes of my own fellow englishmen have a rather strange tendency to replace most of the um's with stutters (Hugh Grant). Im not sure whether this means anything but I'm just throwin it out there, make of it what you will.
23discordians 2 years ago
That's the problem with learning english...too many ways to say the same thing.
napalmsaliva 2 years ago
damn i thought you were a god when having conversations and speaking on youtube
unicep12345 2 years ago 2
My ears ring. Does your nose ring?
premed2 2 years ago 3
wow staggering
cardellacole2 2 years ago
I'm only 5 minutes in at this stage but I must say I'm loving this. Reason being that I'm so used to seeing your slick, easy flowing edited work and I know I can sometimes seem very plodding and deliberate in my delivery. But I rarely edit my videos and I usually do them off the top of my head so it made me realise I'm not actually doing as badly as I thought I was. Anyway. On to watch the rest.
rozeboosje 2 years ago
Very interesting. I would agree about making the semantic choices, even if I would have a minor quibble about what you said about only ever needing 2500 words (or whatever the number was). It's not that I completely disagree, but I would imagine that the 2500 words you would need would depend to some extent on the ... er... can't think of a right word here ... "domain" perhaps? For example, I would use a different set of 2500 words at work than I would use at home.
rozeboosje 2 years ago
@ 6:20
Don't fall for it Pino! He's just doing it in order to make a point. He's so fucking brilliant that he feels the need to perpetrate this fraudulent farce so that he can be perceived as a non-Mensa freakazoid.
premed2 2 years ago
LOL
rozeboosje 2 years ago
Great video, very interesting.
cosmicterror 2 years ago
I have a suspicion regarding your use of "um" etc. in this video. I think when you're partially conscious of the "ums" you're actually more likely to use them.
I've noticed this before also with alliteration. Trying to think of only words with few or no "s" sounds, I discovered I sounded like a snake.
Another thing: I believe your level of alertness also affects your use of filler words. But this is probably covered in "Um..." which I have only got to chapter 1 in.
Joshbuckler 2 years ago
I was at first, and they didn't come consciously, but the ones I noticed I laughed at. But getting into the groove of my topic, no, I can't agree that there was really any subconscious effort to make more.
azrienoch 2 years ago
Right. That does appear to be the case.
Joshbuckler 2 years ago
Are you able to provide the ISBN for "um"? :)
hord 2 years ago
that was interesting Jeff... thank you for sharing these ideas with us...
peace2U
IChoseTheRedPill 2 years ago
you are a hesitant, stuttering, anti-semantic continuously repeating your mantra of ums.
billybobhobnob101 2 years ago
you so hairy
shalylol 2 years ago
This has been flagged as spam show
me so horny
The1337Juice 2 years ago
"please don't interrupt me" but still those are the exact moments when we do interrupt. And it drives me nuts. Yet I'm incapable to rise above it and stop interrupting that prosess. If I start doing that Video responce i promiced you've just made it just wee bit harder. Nice work
AnssiArpiainen 2 years ago
I agree. We exist to do this. That's why it saddens me, to hear such unimagination, ignorant conversations. Everywhere I go. Has the art of intelligent interaction died?
Hmmmm....
ShortbusMooner 2 years ago
The mere fact that you are posting an intelligent question, interacting in a mindful way, posits that it is not! Whether it is not a central tenet of out life I will agree it is not. But when was it anyway?
manny27021976 2 years ago
There's are words that you don't use very often, That can take a long ass time to remember...
The last time I used "Celestial" it took me 5 minutes to recall the damn word... LOL, The concept of celestial was there I just couldn't put a sound to it.
dackjaniels555 2 years ago
Hell I sometimes take a long time to think of words that I do use often, usually when I'm tired, or distracted by excess 'background' noise. The difference is that I do not use 'ahhh' or 'ummmm', or any fillers at all. I simply allow myself to be silent during the time I'm recalling a word. Some persons (usually the audio addicted) accuse me of not completing sentences, because of this.
wyrdness1 2 years ago
i've had reversals. just last weekend i said "the blue is sky", complete accident but it happened
CloudMeetsSky 2 years ago 2
You selling Um? :P
UpTheIrons1994 2 years ago
Not as much as I'm selling the American Heritage Dictionary.
jeffsmithluedke 2 years ago
HA!
MrCarelo 2 years ago
I don't consider fillers to be helpful to communication, so much as a way of stalling, while we chose our words. They also reveal a certain amount of discomfort with the process.
The English language is far inferior to many other languages in communicative ability. We should make every effort to communicate on the top of the ability of language because of that. :)
wyrdness1 2 years ago
Information retention studies say otherwise. It's not about discomfort, it doesn't reveal something the speaker is trying to hide. Though mistakes occur more when the speaker is stressed or distracted, but they happen even when the speaker is perfectly comfortable and concentrated. And I don't know where you get this idea that English is "far inferior," because it's not. And even if we spoke a different language, the fillers and mistakes occur just as often, it's a universal part of language.
azrienoch 2 years ago
English certainly is inferior in many ways. Other languages have more shades of meaning, and can be more precise, while simultaneously being more concise. Of course this is not a comprehensive effect. For the cultures that use English as a primary language, it is superior, as its areas of excellence center around the activities and concepts that are important for those cultures.
wyrdness1 2 years ago
Name me one or two language that are superior to English. I'm curious.
Borror0 2 years ago
Greek would be one
wyrdness1 2 years ago
Those shades of meaning only apply to clusters of words here and there, in English and in all other languages. Using "inferior" to describe any of them is just about biased enough to be silly. Less complicated, I'd agree. At any rate, its simplicity should alleviate mistakes. It doesn't, of course, and thankfully, because they're only mistakes to prescriptivists--who are generally too concerned with how things ought to be to notice how things need to be--and to the rest of us, necessary.
azrienoch 2 years ago
A language does not exist, live, breath outside its users. Yes, there are dictionaries to count words and of course there are statistics on the number of people that use (to various extends) a specific language. But it is misleading to try to 'rate' languages. Even though I'm a native Greek speaker I don't communicate any better or worse because of that.
manny27021976 2 years ago
You have an agenda, Az. Am I not to believe that you purposively uhed, umed, and stuttered!?
JasperAvi 2 years ago
I guess you can believe that, but the only difference between this video and language in normal conversation is that I lacked a person for feedback, which may affect the numbers, I don't know. I'm pretty sure these numbers are about average.
azrienoch 2 years ago
They seem about average.... Well, everything after the first minute where you basically tripped over every other syllable.
That said, people and I are currently hanging out in your BlogTV. It's a party and you're invited.
JasperAvi 2 years ago
To make that remark, is absolutely absurd. If you've ever made a video, or attempted to teach/explain something, you are well aware that when you are put on the spot, words don't just appear. Like Jeff said, the ums/uhs are there to insinuate the process of thought.
somegirlie 2 years ago
Above is a response to comment which has since been deleted stating that Jeff purposefully added on the ums/ugs to push his agenda.
somegirlie 2 years ago
Actually, to make the remark you've just made only further emphasizes my point made in his prior video about people without the capacity to understand points. Jeff makes an entire video explaining the semantic uses of the words uh and um and then goes on to not only have over 200 of them, but to count them himself for our pleasure.
Poor you for not realizing this was purposive!
JasperAvi 2 years ago
Well.. If Az is right, which I think he is, then you are being just as guilty as he is in terms of the semantics chosen in your response, given that you, as himself, both have an 'agenda' and interests to follow.
Boy aren't we a bunch of pupeteers trying to ''outpuppetize'' each other?
Maeldasage88 2 years ago 2
He might have done it without realizing it. Just thinking about saying um probably affected his speech.
ExistentialExistent 2 years ago
FORST, NATHAN FORST.
dackjaniels555 2 years ago